Hobbies.

Stamps Honor Nixon, Aviator

The U.S. Postal Service has issued two 32-cent commemoratives honoring President Richard M. Nixon and Bessie Coleman, the world's first licensed black female aviator.

The Postal Service usually honors former presidents on the birthday anniversary the year following their death. Nixon was born Jan. 9, 1913, but his family agreed to delay the stamp until April because of the recent postal rate change.

Coleman (1892-1926) was born in Texas and later moved to Chicago. At age 29, she decided she wanted to learn to fly but was refused lessons because she was a woman and black.

Undeterred, Coleman learned French at a language school, then sailed to France to follow her dream in a more tolerant country. In 1921, she was awarded a pilot's license by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale in Paris.

Coleman became a barnstormer, thrilling thousands at air shows with her stunt flying. On April 30, 1926, as she prepared for a parachute jump, a mechanic at the controls overturned her plane and Coleman fell out of an open cockpit to her death 500 feet below.